Soundi magazine 10/2011 printed a huge article about Nightwish and the upcoming Imagianerum album and movie combiantion:
Here it is, translated by me.
Continued on the next post due message board limits...
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Here it is, translated by me.
Soundi Magazine, Issue 10/2011
Nightwish - to Hollywood or to the space?
Text: Timo Isoaho
Did someone make the mistake of thinking that the million euro spent on making Dark Passion Play would be the last gamble with the magick card deck by Nightwish?
Wouldn't have paid off, because the life-worshipping album named Imaginaerum and the movie of the same name will shoot the band from Kitee on a never expected roller-coaster towards a place called 'Imaginaerum'
THE LAST RIDE OF THE DAY
WAKE UP, DEAD BOY
ENTER ADVENTURELAND
Arrgggh! Blood-red water splashing all over. An enormous shark has just bitten off an arm of a muscular male like snapping a match. The man doesn't seem loose his agility and escapes at last. Soon the man now furious for getting wounded, finds a larg trident lying on the shore and walks back in the water with a definite look on his face. Blood squirting off the remnants of the arm attracts the shark speeding back to the human catch and at the instant when the merciless set of sharp teeth are just about snap around the man's body... BANG! The man shoots the trident through the shark's side sending the monster into a desperately squirming death.
Wait a minute. Has the Imaginaerum-movie by Nightwish transformed completely since the last updates? No, not really. Keyboqrd player Tuomas Holopainen, drummer Jukka Nevalainen, guitarist Emppu Vuorinen and bassist-singer Marco Hietala are located in Montreal for shooting the movie, but the crappy horror film "Shark Night" runs in a downtown movie theatre, not in the studios located somewhere uptown. The singer Anette Olzon had preferred the gym at the hotel instead of the movie, which actually is a better total breakout before the shooting of the band's parts of the Imaginaerum-movie will be due next morning.
It's currently the third Sunday of September this year and the musicians except Holopainen, who flew in for the shooting sessions a few days earlier, have arrived in Montreal the night before. Vuorinen explains how the arrival went smoothly at the airport. Discussion with the immigration officer had taken a form like this: "What am I doing here? I am just drinking and hanging around." After that reply, the next long-haired guy in the line, Marco Hietala was asked with a little tighter style: "So, what are you guys really doing here?" Well, a movie. Imaginaerum, due out next spring. The history behind it is long, but at least it's orirgin is publicly known already.
- Dark Passion Play, published in autumn 2007, was such a giant of an album by all measures that overcoming it felt like almost impossible. The end of one path had turned visible in the horizon. We have always had a strong desire for evolvement and change, so I thought for a long time about the future sketches for Nightwish. Like what there should be found on the next step of the ladder, recalls Holopainen.
- Until the lightning flashed for good. Why on earth the next album should only be limited for an audial experience?
That was it. The seed had been sowed in the soil and there was no return. And next spring the outcome will be due to exist in all it's boldness.
- The journey has been tedious, it has not been a project for the impatient nor the agitated. Sometimes our feet have been running in the seven league boots, but even more familiar have been the feeling of heavy security boots stuck in the muddy soil.
In late September 2011, a few years after the first brainstorm meeting Nightwish with their co-operators have clearly passed the hurdles. The actors chosen for the movie have been shooting their parts for several days already - The band members have no main roles except through the music.
- Imaginaerum is turning into reality here in Montreal. Imaginaerum means freely intrpreted "a place for imagination". When sanitairum means a place where sanity will be heeled, then imaginaerum means a place where the imagination will be healed. It's what this movie is all about. I wanted to include the carpe-diem spirit and reminders of the wonders of being alive and of the beauty of memories, Holopainen describes.
- The feeling a few days ago when I walked in the studios and was able to see concretely in how skillful hands everything lies, how magical everything looks and how well Stobe controls the whole... At the moment the long project finally became alive. It was an incredible moment.
"Stobe" is the director of the movie, Stobe Harju. He is also responsible of the manuscript for the movie together with Mikko Rautalahti. Without Harju the movie would not exist, at least in the form which it is taking now. Holopainen got to know his yet-to-come partner when Nightwish shot The Islander-video in Rovaniemi in October 2007.
- I realized that our visual minds share the same wavelengths. The works and fantasy realms of Walt Disney, Tim Burton, Neil Gaiman, Salvador Dali and alike are important to us. The Islander turned out a winner and strengthened my own idea of making a music video of every song on the next album and connecting them together.
Straight during the first officcial meeting Stobe told Holopainen that Tuomas was insane for the good, but on the same breath he said he loved the idea. Next the director wrote some seventy pages of tentative manuscript and soon he presented the idea of adding dialog between the videos. It all actually meant pushing Holopainen's original idea towards a more movie-like outcome.
- I had to chew Stobe's views, because it wiped off my original idea. I meant that the music alone shold do the storytelling. Stobe did convince me about the idea that in this case the combination of music and dialog will turn out the best possible result. I remember still the moment when I saw the first visual sketches. I was convinced to my heart.
- After that the Imaginaerum album and the movie went on hand in hand. The names of songs and original visions of over ten music videos were the start of the actual movie. Lyrics and music got the final form based on the long backing stories written by me and Stobe. The detailed manuscript for the movie was then based on the finished songs. The project has proceeded a step by a step.
"I WENT TO DIE IN A
SEASIDE HOTEL
LANES OF MEMORY
PAVED BY SWEET
FROZEN MOMENTS"
The step-wise proceeding work was new for Holopainen. Before he had worked the most material for Nightwish alone based on his own visions. But which did change more during the process; the compositions or the lyrics?
- The lyrics. For example the whole text of "Song of Myself" - except the poem in the end - took the final form only after finishing the manuscript. I wanted to bind together all the previous on the album, hence Walt Whitman is mentioned there, among other things. In the phonetic part of the song we will hear over twenty people. In the main role we have our old companion Troy Donockley, becauae English is his native tongue. In addition, each bandmember were entitled to choose a couple of their most important persons to read a piece of text. Fathers, mothers, wives and children do speak in there, reveals Holopainen.
- Except Song of Myself, also Turn Loose The Mermaids is one of the most emotional songs on the album. The title is a bow to My Dying Bride and to their excellent album, but the lyrics tell about the passing away of my over 90-yrs old grandfather. For some reason a thought about mermaids came to my mind at he moment when grandpa left to a new journey. I thought that mermaids came to take him to a better place.
Opposing most people's thoughts, the most unexpected song of the album was born among the first, right beside Ghost River. A long before the manuscript or even before the idea about a movie.
- Slow, Love, Slow began from challenging myself. The previous album presented gospel, choir and celtic influences: Now it became jazz. It is a fine music genre, of which I do not understand almost anything. I watched Twin Peaks and listened to Angelo Badalamenti, and from those it began to entwine. The other bandmembers never frowned on this song at all. Actually all said wow, right on! Sure a jazz piece like this will bring some dynamics to the grand and big sound of the CD. I definitely wakes one up when a metalband shifts into a jazz gear.
- Concernign this, I have to tell that many things from the demo recordings ended on the final Imaginaerum. Like the bass tracks of Slow, Love, Slow. We played the demo bass track again and again at Petrax-studios and realized thet there wasn't much to add to it. Like why re-record it any more. Also the guitar solo is from the demo sessions. Emppu played it around two o'clock in the morning while not too sober, when asked to "make out something". Later we listened to it and found out that it was great and emotinal, let's put the solo on the CD. About 25% of keyboards originate from the demo sessions. Of the vocals even more, up to 50% were taken straight from the demos. Of course we did re-record all lead vocals at the studio sessions, but the freshness of the first takes won many times. Also some last moment ideas ended on the Imaginaerum CD. The best example can be found on The Crow, The Owl And The Dove.
- The C-part didn't agree with us and we tried at least ten different alternatives for it. Guitar and piano solos and anything but the whole did not click together. Then on DPP tour, I asked Troy Donocley if he had any ideas to share for it. Troy presented a phonetic part in late Cumbric language and the lock was opened immediately. We then made him sing that part himself.
- Among other skills, Troy is alsoa great magician. The man once called to me in a hotel room and asked me to take out a deck of cards. My own deck, which he had never touched. He then told me to divide it in three and pull out a card from one of them. In the end he told me: You are now watching a Jack of Hearts... It was quite an amazing moment. I think I dropped the phone and didn't say a thing for a while.
- Troy has told us that in a calm day he is able to step off a pier and walk on water for a couple of meters and still get back on the pier without getting his feet wet. According to him he has completed the trick twice already.
Besides Slow, Love, Slow, the other special track on the album is Imagianerum-medley which is combined from the themes of all previous songs. This track which closes the album was originally intended as the last part of 'Song of Myself' which had made it last over 20-minutes. A such combination track is something not too common on a rock album - whether we can talk about a common rock album here.
- Hence the medley is there. The kind has rarely been made. It began building up from the thought that what would one want to hear during the credits of the movie rolling on the screen.
The lyrics can be found in the CD booklet. But is it possible to draw further conclusions about the movie manuscript based on the lyrics?
- Not really. One of the driving ideas from the beginning has been that the CD and the movie must stand on their own. A snippet of lyrics "I went to die in a seaside hotel" does not mean someone in the movie dying in a hotel located on the shore. Those lines like everything belong to the larger whole for sure, but even when telling this myself, the details and the amount of efforts put on planning them for the Imaginaerum album and mmovie during the years... Well, for the fans there will be quite lot to research, says Holopainen with a smile.
And how about like the notes on Dark Passion Play's cover, the spread sheets of paper and other detals?
- Everything has a meaning and these things are included in the movie, too. I cannot help it - I love building these puzzles along the edge of reason and insanity. It is extreamely facinating.
The recent years have been quite a puzzle and a roller-coaster for Tuomas Holopainen. The result from the calculations has emerged the most ambitious album and a multi-million-movie combination on Nightwish's fourteen-year career... Now, maybe better take a breath and scroll back in time.
"A PAINTER
ON THE SHORE
a SILENT KITE AGAINST
THE BLUE, BLUE SKY
EVERY CHIMNEY, EVERY
MOONLIT SIGHT"
It's late September 2009. The musicians of Nightwish, a huge number of family and friends and co-operators have gathered at the funeral of the Dark Passion Play- tour in a sauna department of a hotel in Helsinki. The location presents a huge view over the roof-tops of the capital city. The spirits are high and everybody seem to be very relieved. Troy Donocley does his magic tricks and in the other room Marco's brother Zachary entertains people with his incredible stories.
The night before Nightwish have squeezed the last drops of sweat on the stage in the Hartwall Areena in front of a sold out venue at the closing concert of their two-years long world tour. The exhausting tour has driven sales of Anette's debut CD Dark Passion Play into exceeding a million units by the time - a figure in which not many dared to believe back in October 2005 at the unavoided moment of dismissing Tarja. The Dark Passion Play tour didn't pass without some incidents ("for example, the last leg in the USA was quite 'off-the-records, the end is near' -like insanity... when all kinds of things happened"), but unlike after the previous gig at Hartwall, the band is able to pat on their backs; all is well when the end is well.
- As a matter of fact, we do have some big news, but we will return to them later. Let's say we will continue with gambling... But no, we will not kick Anette out, said the keyboardist with a smile.
Both the high sales numbers and the exhausting tour are in past tense in Holopainen's diary. Time to recall the achievements will be sometime in the future, in the rocking chair, perhaps. Right now, with the last flames of the world tour turning low, the visionary of the band is about to rush towards new adventures. His plans for an upcoming movie are proceeding, even though he won't reveal any of his future plans yet.
- About half of the material for our next record has been written. Looks good, that's all he would tell.
The end of a world tour means silence towards the public, but things behind the curtain happen with breathetaking pace. As well in the end of year 2009 and in the first months of 2010. Holopainen travels with his friends to Australia for six weeks, but the road trip isn't for holidays only. The name for the next record is found during the trip: Imaginarium, which later has a light change into Imaginaerum.
The imaginative title is a primer which launches Holopainen on the roller-coaster of creativity and with the help of the trusted sound engineer Tero Kinnunen recordings of the first imaginaerum-demo are finished in April 2010. But the new Nightwish-songs will be brought to real life a few months later during the eight weeks long hot summer-camp held at Röskö, Kitee.
A better location for a Nightwish camp is hard to find; the evening sky glowing in red, yellow and blue over the shores of the nearly 30 C warm lake Ätäskö awaits eagerly the moon to join in the scenery. At these home surroundings Nightwish are free to play and arrange. And then play and arrange some more.
- We have updated our camp blog with mainly pictures of us water-skiing and fishing. The fans have been wondering that what an earth are you doing there, tells Holopainen by a crackly campfire.
- Some distance is taken on purpose, because it'll be long time until the new release will be due. In fact, we have played a lot, done our work to the last notch yet without hurry and any stress. The main object of this camp is to finish the songs, but in the same time we want to build good spirit after the break, something we intend to be heard on the record, too.
The closing fest of the camp becomes an everlasting memory for Holopainen. Imaginarium demo was finished in schedule, and - the most important thing - Jukka Nevalainen and Marco Hietala inform the Maestro of the fact that their own company Scene Nation Ltd has decided to show green light to the Imaginaerum-movie.
- The band members said to me after hearing from the movie idea first time that it's the most cool thing, but where on earth we would get the extra funds? Scene Nation alone cannot finance a project that big.
When the summer camp at Röskö was over, the main sponsor was still unknown.
- Marco and Jukka told me that seeing the manuscript and hearing the finished Imaginaerom demo was good enough to convince them. That every member now have faith in the greatness of the project. Taht momet in priciple secured the birth of the movie, despite the lack of an outsider producer and made a rock the size of a mountain drop off from my heart. I had no intention to drop the movie idea at any phase, but the bands unanimous support was the most important thing to me.
"ONCE UPON A NIGHT
WE'LL WAKE TO
THE CARNIVAL OF LIFE
THE BEAUTY OF
THIS RIDE AHEAD SUCH
AN INCREDIBLE HIGT"
It's February 2010. The sun is shining in Islington, Northern London and the temperature is slightly above the freezing point. A text message tells that it's minus 30 C in Finland. Wasn't Tuomas Holopainen in England enjoying the most interesting part of the Imaginaerum work process - recordings of the orchestra and vhoir parts - the frosty mornings like this might even depress him.
- Winter is the best season. On this planet there aren't any more beautiful scene than snow-covered trees, frozen lake and crisp blue winter sky.
Time to enjoy winter and coldness will become later. Nightwish's members have gathered in the depths of Angel-studios, built inside an old church, in order to follow the recording sessions of the orchestral and chorus parts of Imaginaerum arranged by Pip Williams who has co-operated with them for a long-time. Recordings at the famous Abbey Road studios were stunning and the same description fits with the Islington sessions, too.
- These prima vista musicians are incredible, they have not heard nor practised our material. They will get the notes placed in front of them and the third take at latest will sound excellent. Many times one take is enough, no matter how challenging the song is describes Holopainen in the control room of studio one.
Also counter-appreciation from the musicians' side is obvious. The musicians who have seen it all are visibly impressed about Holopainen's compositions and Williams' arrangements. This is easy to see, when spontaneous applauds to the two maestros fill the air at the end of the session.
- One musician even asked me to have the note sheets for himself. He thought it so challenging that he wanted to make his students practise those things.
The marching order at Angel studios must be hacked in granite. In turn the rooms are filled with different combinations, from a 53-persons orchestra through a smaller string section and children's choir plus a one-man percussion set. The arsenal of the latter consist of an anvil and an oil-drum among other things.
- For how long must this guy have been practising to play an oil-drum alone?
Just before the Islington sessions Nightwish received very good news. Solar Films showed green light and now the band can reveal the long-hidden secret - the news about a full lenght feature film they have been planning.
- This is an enormous relief. At last the Imaginaerum-movie is a puplic thing now. It has been shut inside in my head for so many years already, sighs Holopainen.
- Letting out the news was delayed because sorting out the finace issues took much longer than we wished. The movie will cost a seven-figure sum, and finding a main sponsor seemed quite impossible at some point. An awfully many sleepless nights went by while pondering where to dig up the money. It wasn't too far that I had to mortgage my house to get a loan. I mean it really. Fortunately the planets turned at the right positions at the very last moment. Yet, here is a huge amount of my personal monies and the band's property tied to this movie. To caricature it I could say that all we got during the years has been tied to this - but we didn't have to take a loan, though.
Some may wonder Holopainen's stubbornness about the movie, but turning back is not one of his principles concerning Nightwish. The album and the movie had to be made - despite the threat of a complete financial catastrophy.
- My feeling has been a long time that too many years has been waisted on talking and creating visions and composing songs with the full story in mind. A thought about forgetting the movie felt like blasphemy to me.
"ONCE UPON A TIME
IN A DAYMARE
DYING TO MEET YOU,
LITTEL CHILD, ENTER
ENTER THIS SIDESHOW"
Let us return to Montreal and September in the current year. Shooting Holopainen's few cameo-spirited roles and the acts of the band playing in the movie are due to begin early next morning but the atmosphere in the band is still surprisingly relaxed. Nothing to show that the days to come will be some of the most exiting, challenging and tiresome in the whole project. Holopainen might feel the least exited since he has seen the studios and has met the professional crew already.
The seventh studio album by Nightwish has got it's final touch on the mastering table of Finnvox, Helsinki a few weeks earlier but the band isn't headed to the core of their existence on the stages yet. Time for live gigs will come, but first they have to close their eyes and jump in the dark rabbithole with the hope that the large Canadian film crew at Stobe Harju's command will provide a secure landing.
- I hope not to regret that I wasn't tighter when the manuscript was written. I mean I wish I'd declared clearly that myself will not be inclded in any role. When I visited in front of the cameras for a test, I didn't feel very comfortable - even though my roles are small nor do I have any lines to speak.
Holopainen appears in the movie on four different time layers. A current member of Nightwish, and masked as 47 years old. (his role anme is Tom, the others are Ann, Marcus, Emil and Jack respectively). In addition Tom will be played by a ten year old boy and a man in his seventies.
- For the Making of -video was shot an interview with Francis Xavier McCarthy who plays the role of old Tom. (Btw. in the 80's he performed the role of an alcoholic police chief in the prize-winning cult series Hill Street Blues.) I was listening to him from the side and he did praise the manuscript and this project with such an open honesty, that I felt a tear in the corner of my eye... He actually declared Imagianerum the best manuscript he had read in the last thirty years. Even though we have confidence in what we do, still comments like that hit behind a tree. Like hey, wait a minute, am I awake or not!
After walking through the studios it is easier to understand the first impressions described by Holopainen. The studio complex is huge. There is catering, there are the offices of the production company, there are the rooms of the actors, there are make-up rooms and there they create the digital effects for the movie. And behold, a gloomy forest, a graveyard and ravens have appeared on the material shot agaist a bluescreen.
And there, the actual filming studios. Inside a big hall we find the large jazzclub made for the Slow, Love, Slow -song. In another big hall has been built a large circus arena with a main entrance. Holopainen must feel strange - all these were in his visions years ago already.
- Actually I am unable to tell where the original ideas for the music videos came from. I wanted to re-create the flight of the Snowman with real actors. I wanted to make a Twin Peaks -spirited club scene. I wanted to make a lunatic roller-coaster ride. I wanted to make a ghost circus scene properly with the tongue-in-my-cheek. These different ideas were pouring, but all had this common theme; praise of the priviledge to live.
- Let's stress the fact that I had no clue about the whole story when I was sketching these. Must be some strange guidance behind this, because in the end almost all my visions fit in the full story. I will also remind you of the fact that the credits for the final manuscript belong to Stobe Harju and Mikko Rautalahti, not to me. It's their story, even my visions are the backbone of it. All the important and creative ideas came from them, like "the old man lying on his deathbed"-things and whatnot. Another observation in the beginning was that this story lacks the bad guy. And a good movie always has a bad guy, laughs Holopainen.
The final story will be reveald only next spring, but at the studios it is easy to jump on the tracks created by Holopainen and the manuscript authors in the veins of the surrealistic worlds of Gaiman and Dali. The worlds in the reference images will wake up into life.
- If the biggest inspiration for Dark Passion Play was the "pendulum-thingy" then that position on Imaginaerum belongs to amusement parks and especially roller-coasters. To speak about a concrete one, then the Spiderman 3D at the Universl Studios in Orlando is an incredible creation. It is an indoors three dimensional roller-coaster, all kinds of creature will jump on your face and breathe fire, water and what else on you. It's wild.
Also the movie studios in Montreal provide some fast-paced action. The make-up crew is over-worked when different funny clowns and the three-meter-tall devil-clowns receive paint on their faces and have their fluffy hair sprayed. Visuality for the money's worth. "Oh my god, the house full of freaks" a member of the camera crew shakes his head with a smile.
Nightwish plays or acts to play the songs from their new album again and again. Masked as stylish jazz musicians or as a lunatic circus director. In the middle someone needs painkillers for an aching neck, somtiimes the volume goes up so high that the neighbouring studio sends a polite demand to lower the sound level. Finally, at the end of a long day, Emppu Vuorinen is able to stretch his back lying on the circus arena - all wet of sweat and totally exhausted. The day began at six in the morning, continued through the rush hour of Montreal and with hours of masking and endless film takes. And this was not it yet.
- How many more days we're going to shoot?
Continued on the next post due message board limits...
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